Channel One News is a youth marketing company whose main purpose is to get advertising to a captive audience of impressionable schoolchildren. The company loans a school TV equipment in exchange for the school’s contractual pledge to show students a daily, 12-minute, hyper-commercial, TV program called Channel One News. Students lose one hour a week of schools time, which equates to one lost week of instructional time (32 hours) per year. No educational organization endorses the use of Channel One News.
Channel One has fallen on very hard times. Once they claimed over 8 million students were under contract. Since 1997 they have continued to lose schools and now they claim “nearly five million” students and the true figure is probably lower.
In May 2014, publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt acquired Channel One from ZelnickMedia the makers of the ultra-violent Grand Thief Auto video game series. Houghton Mifflin did not disclose the purchase price.
At the end of 2014 most of Channel One’s full-paying advertisers have abandoned the program.
From Jim Metrock: April 26, 2013 – Ah, the embarrassment was too much for Channel One and its on-air personalities. (I admit it was disquieting even to me to see Channel One reporters begging advertisers to help their company.) YouTube has taken down our “Sizzle/Frizzle” video because Channel One claims a copyright infringement. There...
Read More »
Spring house cleaning continues at marketing company Channel One. A look back at the man who loved to connect advertisers with children. In the early 2000’s when he was Channel One’s VP of Sales Kent Haehl knew that there was an obesity crisis developing among young people, but he signed up junk food...
Read More »
Jim Metrock: In 16 years of researching and reporting on Channel One News, I have never seen such a video. Channel One’s “reporters” are virtually begging any potential advertiser to help pay their salaries. These young people consider themselves young journalists, but as I always try to remind people, they are employees of...
Read More »
6th grade students, just one year out of elementary school, see the same violent images on Channel One News as high school seniors see. Channel One’s “one-size-fits-all” approach to news stories shows their insensitivity to their preteen audience. Showing the same news stories to an audience ranging from 10 years-old students to 18 year-old...
Read More »
Channel One news anchor Julian Dujaric.
Read More »
Jessica Kumari in her 6th! year at Channel One News.
Read More »
Food food advertising is back at Channel One News.
Read More »
From Jim Metrock: Channel One News is now advertising the notorious SunnyD beverage to its captive audience of schoolchildren. Yes, Channel One News is back advertising junk food to American students. If you think “junk” is too harsh for such a “sunny,” “delightful” drink, then you probably haven’t checked out its ingredients. SunnyD...
Read More »
From Jim Metrock: The blank purple space at the top of all Channelone.com’s pages used to be filled with banner ads. For several days the banner ads are gone. Does this mean Channel One News has run out of companies wanting to advertised on their controversial website? That is possible since there...
Read More »
